


coming home to you, darling

by telanaris



Series: Arcana One-Shots [20]
Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Birthday, Birthday Presents, Domestic Fluff, F/M, Fluff, Gen, Intimate massage, M/M, Massage, Self Insert, Undressing, prompts from tumblr
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 14:36:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18209639
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/telanaris/pseuds/telanaris
Summary: Julian works too hard, even on his birthday. Reader rubs Doctor Devorak down after he comes home from a late night of house calls.(If your kink is being Nice and Soft to the slippery boy, this one's for you.)





	coming home to you, darling

**Author's Note:**

> anon prompt from tumblr:  
> Can't go wrong with celebratory intimate massage since Julian has such an amazing back anyways, whether it leads to spicyness is up to u!

The light from the oil lamp on the bedside table flickers over the pages of the book in your lap. It’s barely enough light to read by, but you aren’t really trying; you’ve read the same sentence four times, straining your ears against the quiet night, waiting for the slightest hint of Julian’s footsteps as he makes his way home. He had said he would be home no later than sunset—but that was hours ago. By now, you had eaten alone,  cleaned the kitchen (putting away the untouched dishes, the unlit candles) and crawled into bed. The last of your optimism kept you from changing into your pajamas; you were still dressed as you had been when you expected him, on the off chance that Julian made it home before sleep claimed you. 

The hour was late, and the moon had already swung halfway across the sky before you heard Julian fussing with the lock on the door, keys jangling as he tried to find the right one in the dark.   
  
Something loosened in your body—a tension you hadn’t realized you’d been holding. It isn’t too out of the ordinary for Julian to work so late—he is after all the only doctor for miles, and sickness does not wait for normal business hours to strike—but you still worry a little when he’s gone this late, and you always try to stay awake until he comes home, if you can. It’s harder to sleep without him next to you, anyway.    
  
Finally Julian’s key found the lock, and the door swung open. Julian entered, his footsteps audible but soft, not his usual jaunty gait. He took great care, deliberately muffling his steps, trying to make sure he didn’t disturb you if you had already fallen asleep. When he pushed the bedroom door open, he did so gently, so that the door would not creak as loudly as it sometimes did; when he peeked his head around the door, however, and saw you awake and upright in bed, a smile broke over his face.

“You didn’t need to stay up for me, love,” Julian says, his voice soft and weary but undeniably delighted just the same.    
  
“And miss the chance to kiss you goodnight on your birthday? I don’t think so.” You pat the mattress beside you, making space for Julian. “Come here?”   
  
Julian looks at the bed with blissful relief. As soon as he reaches the edge of the mattress, he topples onto it, flopping fully onto his stomach with his arms at his sides and his face buried in the blankets somewhere beside your hips. The groan he makes sounds  _ almost _ filthy, but you suspect it’s just the solace of being home and (at last) off his feet. He had been so eager to join you he hadn’t even taken off his coat; his boots are still on his feet, but at least Julian’s dangling them a foot or so over the edge, suspended beyond the blankets so he doesn’t dirty them.  

“That bad, huh?” you ask, already reaching for the lapels of his overcoat.    
  
“Not  _ bad _ ,” Julian replies, diplomatic even in his exhaustion—he still insists he hasn’t had a bad day since the Masquerade in Vesuvia all those years ago.  _ ‘Never a bad day with you, dear. _ ’ You smile at the thought as you gently guide one arm, then the other out of their respective sleeves. “Just far. Six miles to the village to the west, near the bend in the river. On foot—I wasn’t able to borrow Alyoshka’s horse this time.”   
  
You click your tongue, folding his coat in your arms. You can still feel the cold night air clinging to the fabric. You eye his boots; on second glance, you’re able to make out the crusted ice and half-frozen mud on them. It’s the tail end of winter, but there’s still enough snow on the ground to leave your feet numb if you stay out in it too long without good, woolen socks.    
  
“And what emergency called you so far out of town tonight, without a horse to bear you?” you ask, gently guiding him onto his back while you work on the snaps of his uniform.    
  
“Far from an emergency, thankfully,” Julian said. “A few of the children are sick. I don’t think it’s serious—just a winter cold going around, harmless—but one little girl was wheezing terribly, and her mother was very worried about her. I left them some medicine and told them to throw some water over the hot rocks in the heart, steam her bedroom to take the dryness in the air; I’ll go back in two days to check on them.”   
  
The snaps of his uniform are easy work; you pull it off, leaving him in the soft gauze undershirt he always wears beneath. That finished, you reaching for the garters of his boots. 

You never reach them—Julian takes your hands in his, and you turn to meet his penitent gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he said, softly. “I didn’t mean to be gone so long. But the same village lost a pair of children last winter, and so even though it sounded like it wasn’t serious, I had to go. I couldn’t let them worry. And if I’d been wrong—if something had happened to one of those children in the night—”   
  
“You don’t have to apologize, Julian,” you say, meaning it. You’ve lived in this part of the Nevivon countryside long enough by now to learn that everyone gets a bit mad this deep into winter, just before the thaw. You take his wrist and lift his hand, pulling his glove loose finger by finger until you draw it free with a flourish and his hand is left bare; you press a soft kiss to his knuckles, then the open palm of his hand. 

“Spring will come soon,” you tell him, lips lingering against his skin. “Things will be easier, then.”

Julian smiles, soft and sleepy and content. “Soon,” he agrees, with a nod. “I’ll pick you a handful of snowdrops, the first ones I see blooming.”   
  
“Hopefully, you’ll find them under the sun, at a decent time to be outdoors,” you joke, then kiss his knuckles one last time before bringing your hands back to the garters on his thigh, the ones that cinch his boots to his legs. Once it’s unbuckled, you wrap your hands around the heel of his boot—cold and splattered with mud and ice though it is—rocking it gently in your hand as you work the sleeve of the boot down his leg. When it at last comes free, Julian murmurs a low sound of approval, toes stretching against his socks, revelling in their new freedom.    
  
Your hand finds his ankle, rubbing it gently. It’s nearly cold as the ice caked on his boot, despite the thickness of his socks. Julian makes another satisfied sound, but you frown. “You work too hard, Julian,” you say, quietly, before moving your hands up to his other garter.    
  
Julian huffs petulantly when you remove your hand, but he lifts his thigh obligingly, raising it just enough so that you make easy work of the second buckle. “What can I do, darling?” he asks, rolling his foot to help as you work the shaft of the boot down his leg. “Would you have me turn my back on the people who need me?”   
  
No. You don’t want that at all. It’s part of what you love about Julian: his selflessness, his desire to do good, to help others. But sometimes, it can make him a little self-destructive; too often he runs himself ragged, so concerned about the people he’s taking care of that he fails to take care of  _ himself. _ You’ve told him time and time again he must  _ be _ well in order to do his job well. He always listens, but you think he only really hears you about half the time. 

“Maybe we should save up to buy our own horse,” you reply, pulling the second boot free with a swift tug, “if you’re going to be riding up and down the valley all through the night, in deepest winter.” Then, more practically, you suggest, “Or perhaps you could take an assistant. An apprentice.”

You reach to peel off his socks, but at your words Julian laughs so hard he nearly kicks your hands away. 

“You think that’ll make it easier?” he asks when he can finally speak through the laughter, tears of mirth in his eyes. “You’ll never see me, then—I’m a rotten teacher. I’ll just make the poor sap confused, I’ll do more harm than good.”

“That isn’t true,” you protest. You know this from experience. “You were fantastic when I was working with you in the clinic, in Vesuvia. You taught me a lot, and that was during the plague.”

The memory leaves Julian tugging his lip between his teeth, a fond smile on his lips, a flush in his cheeks. He looks at you now as he used to look at you then, when you were both new to each other, mysterious and unknown; when you had not yet memorized all the curves and sharp angles of each other’s bodies; when the feel of his skin beneath your hand was a secret you wanted to find out, when there was less experience but plenty of hunger. The old longing of those distant days smolders in his eyes like an ember.

“Well, that was a special circumstance,” Julian says, voice a low rumble. “You put me on my best behavior; I wanted so badly to impress you, after all.”

You snort a little, pulling his socks free from his feet. “Your ‘best behavior?’ I made you  _ clumsy, _ ” you correct, with a knowing grin. “Your hands would shake—you’d drop things, if I got too close or flirted a little too aggressively. Scoot up for me, will you?” you ask, patting the sole of his foot, motioning for him to get himself fully on the bed now that he’s out of his dirty boots.

Julian nods, and shimmies until his body is fully on the bed. “I did clean up a lot of shattered glass that year,” he reflects, wryly.

“And  _ I _ picked a lot of glass out of your fingers,” you say, taking his foot in hand. It’s cold as the ground outside, and probably still half-numb from Julian’s long walk home, but when you press your thumbs deep and firm into the arch beneath his foot, Julian groans, back arching off the bed. “And then I cleaned and dressed your cuts—just like you taught me to. It was good practice, you being such a klutz.” 

“Then I regret none of it,” Julian groaned, pushing his foot into your hand as you trace a deep curve from his heel to the ball of his foot. “You were a wild thing when you came to me, a healer and a magician but  definitely  not a doctor. You needed the pra— _ ahhh _ , mmph _ — _ the practice.”

He’s losing his tongue, eyes closed, slack-jawed and limp under the firm pressure of your hands. You knead the divet in the center of the ball of his foot, working your way outwards, and he lets loose a low moan of satisfaction. 

"That feels, mmm... really nice, darling," he manages, just barely cracking open his eyes to give you a grateful look and a soft smile.

"Good," you reply, warmly. "That's why I offered. Give me the other?"

Gently you ease his first foot back down to the blankets, then take the other into your lap. A breath shudders through him when you press your fingers into his sole; the skin warms under your touch, his toes stretch. Julian makes a pleased sound that's half-hum and half-whimper, before easing back onto the mattress with a grateful sigh.

“I think you’d be really good at it,” you say, as you work your hands up from his foot to his ankle, then to the tightly coiled muscles of his calf. Julian’s eyelids flutter as you press into his flesh, pushing your fingertips in tight circles up the back of his calf and the outside of his leg until it grows lax in your grip. “Teaching, I mean. You’re smarter than you give yourself credit for, Ilya.”

Julian only grunted, the pleasure sound undercut by a note of disgruntlement. “And you think  _ too _ highly of me: you think me capable of anything.”

“I’m usually right,” you reply, smugly, moving your fingers to the taut calf of his opposite leg. “You managed the neat trick of dying and then coming back to life. You helped me stop Lucio and the Devil. Of course I believe you can do anything.” Then, you add, unable to help yourself, “Honestly, taking an apprentice should be a cakewalk for you, compared to that year.”

Julian neither agrees nor disagrees; he makes a noncommittal noise, which stretches long and low and follows the stroke of your hands on his leg, stretching the rigidity out of them. The tension is baked into his limbs from the long walk home, all that hurrying against the cold and the dark, but under your warm, familiar touch, it begins to ease. 

You love Julian’s legs—you’re always startled by the remarkable width of them, the strength of his thighs, the shift of his muscles—and so you work your hands along the tense muscles at an unhurried pace, pausing anywhere you feel a knot of tension, taking extra care to alleviate such tightness wherever you find it. 

“I think teaching is mostly about communication,” you continue. “It felt like that with Asra, anyway. You have to be able to explain things in a way people understand, so you have to be able to read people, and connect with them. But you have that in spades, Julian. You’re a great communicator.”

Julian opens his mouth, as if he’s about to protest, but he shuts it firmly as you drag deep lines along the length of his thighs with your thumbs. 

“The world could use more doctors like you,” you insist, working his second leg until it goes just as limp as the first, elastic, all the stress emptied of it. “And,” you add, delightedly, “it would leave us with more time to spend together, if you had someone who could go in your place every time a child two villages over catches the sniffles.”

“Mmm—what?” Julian asks, his eyes blinking lazily open. “Like this,  _ specifically _ ? With you turning me to putty beneath your hands?” He grinned, full and with a flash of teeth, tilting his head back against the mattress as he leveled the accusation: “I do believe that’s bribery.”

You smile. “I’ve been accused of worse.” Stealing bodies, for one. But that was years ago, and you know by now this skin, this  _ life _ is yours to spend and share as you please. You’re briefly struck anew with a familiar gratitude: thankful for your bones, the tendons and ligaments laid atop them, the thin skin stretched over it all. You’re thankful for your body, the one you use to push and drag against Julian’s, to give him relief, to give him pleasure. “Is it working?”

“May- _ muhhhh, _ m-maybe.”

You grin at him, kneading your knuckles into the side of his hips. “Turn over for me, then?”

He’s mellowed, too languid now from the press of your hands to respond to the request with his ordinary enthusiasm and urgency; there’s something delightfully primal about the way his chest heaves, the sound of weariness he makes as he raises himself onto his elbows and flops back onto his front. He’s dog-tired, weary down to his very bones. But rather than be bitter about it—rather than be upset that he’s been worked so hard on his birthday—you are just thankful, glad that he is home at last and beneath your hands where you can make him feel good.

Your fingers slip under his undershirt, then pull it loose from the hem of his pants and work it over his head. You reach for the bottle of oil that’s always kept in the drawer of the nightstand, then you straddle his waist, hovering just over his thighs, careful to hold yourself above them instead of resting on top of them. You coat your hands with the oil, making sure to warm it between your palms, then press your hands into Julian’s back, smoothing up the muscles along his spine with your thumbs.

Julian’s face is pressed into the blankets; they muffle the grateful sound he makes, but you can feel it vibrating through him just the same, his chest rumbling under your palms. 

“That’s okay? The pressure, I mean,” you ask, to be sure, as you trace your thumbs around the sharp bones of his shoulder blades. “Not too hard?”

His whole body shivers beneath your touch; he moans through closed lips. “S’good,” he answers, “s’just right.”

You smile, then turn your attention back to your work. You press the heel of your hand into his back, running it firmly from the small of his back up to the base of his skull, working slow but rolling steadily over the knotted muscles; when you reach the back of his neck, you roll back down, over shoulder and muscle and ribs, down to the dimples just above his ass. Then you repeat against the opposite side, with the other hand.

Julian is utterly pliant beneath you. You know he’d let you touch him however you like—hurt him, if you wanted—but this time, you just want to comfort him, make him feel warm and drowsy and loose. It’s working. Wherever you find a knot of tension, you work your knuckles into it, circling it, increasing the pressure until it releases and Julian is supple beneath you. Soon your hands are gliding easily across his broad back, smoothing the stiffness out of his shoulders. 

Julian turns his head to the side. Before you can tell him to put it back (he’s messing up his alignment that way; you’re worried you  _ will _ hurt him, touching him like this, undo all your work) he speaks.

“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” he says, quietly, voice full of genuine contrition and more regret, you think, than the dinner really deserves. “I promise I’ll make it up to you.”

You blink, taken aback. Then your hands trace across his shoulders, not applying any pressure, just dragging your nails lightly against the freckles on his back. “It’s okay, Julian,” you reassure him. “It’s  _ your _ birthday, after all. You don’t have to make anything up to me.”

“I do,” he said, but even as he says it he closes his eyes, wiggling beneath you, trying to direct your hand. “Just a little—yes, up, to the left— _ ahhh _ , yes,” he says, satisfied, as you find the itch between his shoulders. When his pleased him tapers off, continues, “You took the time to try and think of a good way to celebrate. You picked out the dishes, you shopped, you cooked, and I wasn’t here. I really did try to be home on time.”

“It’s okay, Julian. I know it wasn’t on purpose.”

Julian shifts underneath you, and you swing your leg over his waist so he can turn over. He lies beside you, staring up at you, then reaches to twine your fingers together and drag your hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to your knuckles, just as you did when you welcomed him home. It’s almost like the massage has only made him more guilty, not less; he’s looking at you with that dogged gaze, full of love and affection and the seed of disbelief you still can’t quite uproot: his incredulity that, after all this time, you picked  _ him, _ you are with  _ him _ , you love—of all people— _ him,  _ most of all _. _

“You know, all my best birthdays have been with you,” he admits, voice low. “Every time, you make me feel like the next one is worth looking forward to. Knowing I get to spend another year with you… it makes each one special.”

You lift an eyebrow at him. “Even this one, when you’ve been out all night, breath frosting on your face?”

Julian grins. “Even this one. Coming home to you, darling… after all this time, that’s still a real treat.”

It’s such a perfectly Julian thing to say: so corny it’s almost a cliche, but said with absolute sincerity, and it leaves you feeling warm. Warm enough, anyway, to consider if there’s another way you can make this birthday even more memorable.

“How tired are you?” you ask, trying to keep your voice nonchalant.

“Pretty bushed,” Julian replies, still holding your hand gently in his, playing with your fingers. “Why?”

You shoot him a coy glance, eyes lidded. “Do you wanna open your present?”

That stirs his interest. “Oho. A present?” he asks, grin widening. “What did you get me? I’m sure I’ll love it, whatever it is.”

You’re pretty sure, too. You spent hours with Nadia looking at different colors, cuts… different patterns of lace, comparing sheer silks. Swallowing your nerves, you keep your eyes on his, then lift your free hand to the collar of your shirt, and slowly begin to unbutton it. Julian’s eyes widen, then darken with interest as you reveal inch after inch of bare skin… and then, eventually, the lingerie Nadia helped you pick out to surprise him. All straps and lace against your skin, inviting Julian’s gaze, his attention, his touch.

It works.

He slips his hand free of yours, opting to wrap an arm around your waist instead. With his hand on the small your back, he guides you flush against him, close enough that he can press his face to your bare chest, dragging the tip of his nose against your breastbone and planting a kiss just below your collar. His breath is warm on your skin; his nails rake lightly against the small of your back. Not-too-discreetly, you feel him grind his hips against your thigh, his arousal seeking the friction of your leg.

“Hmm, you know,” Julian says, with a mischievous grin, “Suddenly, I don’t feel all that tired anymore. And  _ unusually _ limber, on top of that.” He lifts his head, raising his eyes to the same level as yours, brushing your lips with his own when he speaks.

“If I’m good,” he murmurs against your mouth, “will you show me the rest?”

You smile, brushing the tip of your nose against his. 

“It’s  _ your _ present,” you tell him, voice pitched low and sultry, just the way he likes. “Unwrap me whenever you want, birthday boy.”

Julian moans, again, but this one is utterly unlike the ones he made when you were massaging his back: this one is needy, hungry, desperate. His hands fly to the waist of your trousers. He fumbles with them eagerly, filling your mouth with kisses as he does.

 

When he finally gets your pants free, he flings them across the bedroom, heedless of where they land, abandoned like used gift wrap. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> i'm on tumblr at @4biddenleeches where I sometimes answer prompts


End file.
